MUNCIE – Just talking with Bob La France over a couple of icy blueberry Sprites is an art education in itself.

Visit his museum, though, and you will learn lots more.

“That museum is really Muncie’s gateway to the world of art,” said the new director of the David Owsley Museum of Art at Ball State University. “It’s a wonderful museum. It’s a real jewel.”

A good-humored, friendly man, as La France spoke he was seated at a table in The Caffeinery downtown, neatly dressed in a brown suit, his tie perfectly knotted. That art is his passion was evidenced by the excitement in his voice as he discussed the first book he wrote, one about the Italian Renaissance painter Bachiacca, who lived and worked about the time of Michelangelo.

The book is “Bachiacca: Artist of the Medici Court.” The painter, he noted, was unusual in that he embraced a cosmopolitan style that was more in keeping with that of Northern European painters.

“It makes him a rather complicated figure,” La France said without pretense. He went on to explain he had just finished his second book, a 300-page, 223-illustration tome completing a work that the late, as in dead, 20th century writer Allen Weller had started on sculptor Lorado Taft, who lived from 1860 to 1936.

“I am completely insane,” La France asserted with a hearty laugh. “I said, ‘I’m going to finish this book.’ ... I will tell you something. It is very difficult to finish another person’s work, especially if they’ve been dead for a decade.”

As he talks, it becomes apparent the new director is comfortably in his element, art being his passion as well as his livelihood. It also becomes apparent he has the ability to convey that passion to those of us less schooled in art, a vital skill for a museum director. For example, he addressed the question of where one could see the work of the Paris-trained Taft, which is well-represented in major cities like Chicago?

Try Winchester, he surprisingly advised, where Taft designed that city’s Civil War monument.

“He threw everything he had into that monument,” La France said, commenting on its remarkable use of brass. “It’s really something.”

That he knows so, reinforces the fact that, while a citizen of the world whose abodes have included Florence, he has a soft spot for the Midwest. Born in Cleveland, he grew up in Southern California, earning a bachelor’s degree in that state’s university system, a master’s degree from a Syracuse University art program, and his doctorate from New York University’s Institute of Fine Art.

Indeed, it was studying art in college that first sparked his passion for it. That eventually led to work as a fine art appraiser and other positions, at the National Gallery of Art, at a Harvard-connected center for Renaissance studies and, most recently, the University of Illinois, where he delved into Taft’s life. Now, the Owsley Museum of Art, where he noted “Gracious living is a fine art” is engraved at the base of the steps, holds a special place in his heart, it being his first big directorship.

Talking about it, he sounds like a proud father.

“An art museum feeds us, culturally, in our own special way,” La France said. “Part of my job is to put the David Owsley Museum on the map.”

Acquisitions are a part of that.

“My job right now is to make sure what I buy ... is the best thing I can get for the museum,” he said, adding that, in keeping with that goal, its present expansion is being undertaken under the direction of Charles Froom, whose reputation is international. “He’s helped us with every step in that expansion. He’s done great work.”

Speaking of which, La France is intent on continuing his own research, and bring that to the public’s eye.

“I believe that we can bring the highest level of scholarship to everyday things, like museum labels,” he said, before waving off a question regarding his own artistic skills. “I’m an OK draftsman, but I’m a better scholar.”

So what does La France — whose wife, Areli Marina, is also an art historian whose first book, “The Italian Piazza Transformed,” is the winner of the 2013 Howard R. Marraro prize — do for fun?

“I like cars,” he said simply, with a smile, describing his classic, road-tested Alfa Romeo, the same kind of car that Dustin Hoffman drove in “The Graduate.”

And while we didn’t ask if there was a piece of art he would happily trade his beloved sports car for, we did ask if he had a favorite piece at the museum.

No way, he said.

“That’s like asking a parent which child they like best,” La France said.